Many PEI farms that once grew a range of crops are now dedicated solely to potatoes. Government has encouraged this shift, which helps keep food prices relatively low. But monoculture needs large amounts of pesticides - chemicals that contaminate ecosystems and threaten public health. Local farmers, drawn into an agricultural economy dominated by food corporations, are pressured to comply.

Prince Edward Island--a rural paradise and a safe haven from the city. But is this image really a mirage?

Many of the children on the Island can't catch their breath. PEI has the highest rate of hospital admissions for asthma in Canada, and many affected never leave home without an inhaler. Hanging over the farmers' fields, reaching into every city and town, is an invisible cloud of extremely dangerous poisons.

Since the late 1960s, the potato has become the commercial crop, creating a monoculture that has destroyed the soil's natural balance. Consequently, potato farmers have grown more and more dependent on pesticides. The last twenty years has seen a 700% increase in the use of these toxins to kill insects that might endanger the potato harvest and the Island's economy.

Filmmaker Sylvie Dauphinais discovered that living in paradise comes at a heavy cost: the health of her son. She has made this documentary to issue a wake-up call about an environmental crisis that is putting the ill, the elderly and the young at greatest risk.